mortgage business

Nov 17
0

2021-What’s Your Vision of How your Business Thrives?

By | Mortgage Business Tips, mortgage coaching | No Comments

bizvision2021Nothing is more critical to your success than having a vision in mind of what that success looks like and feels like. Without a vision, you will find yourself looped in reactive behaviors, projects that start and stop, and frequent feelings of being unmotivated and disconnected. Incorporating a vision statement with your business plan or goal list that you revisit and read on a monthly basis will give you the fuel you need when challenges or set-backs arise. PLUS, it is always a thrill at the end of the year, to see just how much of your vision statement came to life. I love to hear the astonishment in my clients’ voices when they share the victories that sprang from the pages of their annual vision statements.

Paint a picture for yourself. Put yourself in the future, at the end of 2021 and visualize that you are celebrating all that you have accomplished. Describe what it’s like to be in your shoes today. Use present tense as if you have already achieved the goals and are living “the vision.”

Answer the questions below by starting with those to which you have an immediate, positive reaction. Go back and string your answers together and develop a cohesive story line.

  1. Where and how did I give my customers that unforgettable “power moment?” Meaning, what did I do during or after the transaction that I know made me even more memorable?
  2. What changed about my own processes and habits that gave me more time & space in which to focus on increasing my business?
  3. How did I regularly reward myself for a job well done?
  4. What tools, systems and/or habits did I successfully implement to expand my Marketing?
  5. In the next three years, what would excite me about my career in mortgages? What do I feel I still have yet to achieve, become or do?
  6. What tasks, both professionally and personally, did I finally give up that were weighing me down?
  7. What steps did I take to ensure my financial security for the future? What did I learn about financial security in terms of how to make it a constant in my life?
  8. What were the three best gifts I gave myself in 2021?
  9. What do my post mortgage years look like? What might I be doing when I’m not in Mortgages any longer? Do I have any secret desires to learn more about something? Do I have a hobby that I’ve always wanted to delve into? Are there any challenges I’d like to face and overcome before the next phase of my life?
  10. What will I tell my children/grandbabies/close friends about what it takes to succeed in life?
Jan 08
0

Get Clear about Your 2019 Business Vision

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Will you make the commitment to see your 2019 business growth bizvisiongoals through to the end?

To determine the true answer to that question, you FIRST need to ask yourself, “WHY are my business goals so important for me to see through to completion, anyway?”

It could be that you no longer want to spend 60 hours a week stuck behind a desk in your office. Maybe, you’re sick of pounding the pavement, asking real estate agents for their referrals. Or perhaps, finding the fun and rekindling your passion for your chosen career is at the root of your goals for 2019.

If you are unclear about your Why, or if your Why is driven not by your needs and passions, but by someone else’s idea of how you should conduct your business (or your life), you’ll discover that you simply won’t have the will to enact the steps to see your goals through to the finish line.

No why-No will = No results!

Your, “Why” is the grander destination you envision for your life and business, which fuels your, “Will” to take the necessary, daily steps to get you there.

Remember when developing your goals for your 2019 business plan, to run your goal ideas past your, “why meter” first. Make sure you have an excited feeling in your gut about the project, system, marketing strategy, etc., that you plan on implementing.

If your, “why meter” runs hot and the goals are in alignment with your current capacity and business growth vision, then SUCCESS WILL BE YOURS!

To get you kick-started, download my Vision Exercise and gain more clarity about your personal, “Why”

Oct 19
1

Three Success Ingredients Found in Top Producers’ Business Plans

By | Mortgage Business Tips, Uncategorized | No Comments

gettpclass4

How do Top Producers plan for managing lead and referral sources, customer experience plans, and automated marketing methods to stay in touch?

Top producing Loan Officers have learned that developing a Business Plan is NOT a, “someday maybe” but rather a critical component to ensuring their success year after year.

Sign up for Coach Victoria’s class to learn the three, “success ingredients” found in top producers’ business plans, PLUS the tools found in ACT software that can support and automatically activate these strategies.

If you are a mortgage professional, or manage a team of mortgage professionals, this webinar will provide you with the tools to immediately kick-start a winning business plan!

SIGN UP HERE for your free limited time access to the webinar.

 

Jul 11
0

Will YOU Benefit from Hiring a Coach?

By | Mortgage Business Tips | No Comments

CoachsCornerclearfearNot everyone is ready or in the right frame of mind to truly benefit from engaging with a partner whose whole purpose, drive, expertise and mission in life is to help you achieve exactly what you really, really want!

Seems odd to think that someone might not be ready or willing to receive everything that they really, really want, right? However, to get those things that we set our sights on, that seem challenging at the least and impossible at the worst, we have to be willing to change and possibly, change a whole lot!

Obviously there is something keeping us from getting what we want and if nothing needed to change, well…we’d already be living the life we envision or in possession of the things we covet, right?

Change is the most difficult experience to embrace and enact. Hence the reason why there are a million different varieties of coaching: business coaching, life coaching, executive coaching, relationship coaching, creativity coaching, wellness coaching and the niches go on and on…

But at the very core of each coaching discipline, you find one person or persons helping another person or persons to change in some capacity.

Here are four questions to ask yourself prior to reaching out to a Coach:

  1. Do you know what you want to change?
  2. Are you passionate about what you want to change?
  3. Are you willing to do things differently in order to bring about change?
  4. Is the change you seek, something worth failing to achieve at, over and over again until the change happens?

If you can answer Yes to all four questions, then you’re ready to investigate coaching.

If you answered No to any of the questions, then the return on investment you hope to gain from a coaching relationship will likely take A LOT LONGER to achieve as you and your Coach whittle away at deeper issues that may be better suited to discuss with a licensed therapist or clinical psychiatrist skilled at deeper-rooted challenges.

If this is something you suspect you might need, it’s important to ask the Coaches you interview if they have those credentials.

Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying here, just because you don’t get everything done on your to-do list in a day and you feel fear at the thought of calling on prospects sometimes or speaking in front of a group, or you get down in the dumps because the industry can be challenging, does not mean you need a shrink necessarily.

My point is simply that there’s a difference between everyday challenges vs. chronic stalemates and there are the right professionals for each situation so just make sure you align yourself with the proper expert for your situation.

Every Coach has their own unique methods to assisting their clients to achieve MORE from their business and/or personal lives.

In my particular mortgage-specific, business coaching platform, I help my clients to…

  1. turn wishes into goals and goals into calendar-driven action plans
  2. consider alternate perspectives/stretch out of one’s comfort zones
  3. embrace already-proven business growth strategies that fit your personality type
  4. hone-in on your strong points as a sales person and leverage those strong points
  5. incorporate your passions/interests into your business
  6. balance competing priorities between home and work
  7. remain focused on high pay-off activities
  8. determine business growth strategies that fit your current capacity
  9. use solution-based thinking as you approach challenges and make decisions.
  10. identify and eliminate “time-sucking & energy-draining” activities, tasks, people and mindsets from your daily experiences.

To aid you in uncovering the best Coach match for YOU, please download my Coach Interview Questionnaire Knowing the right questions to ask will save you time, money and oodles of frustration and disappointment.

Jun 14
1

Is Your Business Truly Customer Centric?

By | Mortgage Business Tips | No Comments

customercentricMortgage Professionals must keep a keen focus on their customers at all times. If they don’t, the outcome has a direct and immediate effect on their pocket books.

The assurance of a regularly generated paycheck, is simply not part of the Loan Officer package. Every dollar derived is in direct correlation to the Loan Officer’s individual efforts with their customers.

Your answers to the following, highly-specific, customer related questions may be a tough pill to swallow if you’re not ready to tell yourself the 100% truth. However, I believe, if you’re up for the challenge, your answers to these questions will lead you to take actions that will surely have a positive impact on your pocket book in 2017 and beyond.

If you happen to be a Manager, this is a GREAT list of questions to share with your sales team and ask them to submit their answers anonymously (encourages more real, candid answers). The answers will help you to pin-point training, tools and other resource needs you can develop to help your team to improve their performance.

For example if you discover that the majority of your team could not adequately answer question #24, you could conduct a sales call or meeting on how to write a Unique Value Proposition.

  1. Do you do what you say your going to do BEFORE you say you are going to do it?
  2. Do you take a complete application, ask your clients the right questions and get the appropriate information/documentation up front?
  3. Do you know your program underwriting guidelines?
  4. Do your underwriters think you know your underwriting guidelines?
  5. Do your processors respect you?
  6. Do the processors in your office refer their family and friends to YOU?
  7. Do the title/escrow reps think highly of you?
  8. Do you go ahead and do a loan for a client even though you know it is not the best thing for them?
  9. Do you return ALL your phone calls?
  10. Do you return all your emails?
  11. Do you do the things you least want to do first?
  12. Do you complete your “things-to-do” list for the next day before going to sleep?
  13. Do you prioritize your tasks and work on them in their order of importance?
  14. Do you surf the web when you still have calls or tasks to complete?
  15. Do you complain about not having enough business?
  16. Do you keep in contact with all your clients?
  17. Do you have all your clients, prospects and referral partners in a database (ACT, etc…)?
  18. Do you make customer acquisition a priority?
  19. Do you have systems in place to optimize your clients’ mortgage experience?
  20. Do your clients always know where they stand and what they need to close their loan?
  21. Do you withhold information from your clients and let them know “the real story” towards the end of the transaction?
  22. Do you read at least one book a quarter on business development, communication, ethics or the mortgage industry?
  23. Do your clients refer people to you?
  24. Do you have a compelling reason for someone to do business with you?
  25. Do your referral partners and clients think of you as an expert?
Jun 13
0

Are You Sure You’re Hiring Sales-Capable Loan Officers?

By | Mortgage Business Tips | No Comments

Are you tired of filling the seats with warm bodies instead of filling the seats with actual topsalespersonSales-capable Loan Officers?

If you aren’t necessarily focused on recruiting top producers whose production is obvious but instead are willing to bring on individuals whose work history may show gaps of time where they weren’t originating, or who are not as seasoned or come from a different industry, than you need to make sure that you are asking questions that will unearth whether your candidates actually have what it takes to make it in Sales or not!

The fact is that charisma and charm or someone vivacious, honest and good natured cannot be the predominant reasons why you hire them to be a Loan Officer on your team.

Of course we want these positive characteristic in our employees, but my point is just because someone’s personality type seems to fits the mold of what most believe to be a, “good sales person,” does not mean they will succeed in Sales.

Succeeding in Sales has A LOT to do with the following:

  • Discipline
  • Communication
  • Creativity

To uncover if your candidates are actually disciplined in their work lives, communicate their needs and can identify and create opportunities, integrate the following set of open-ended questions into your interview process. You may even want to send these questions ahead of time in order to give your candidates a chance to really think through them prior to the interview.

Discipline questions:

  1. Describe your daily work routine and work schedule.
  2. Explain how you use your calendar and what type of calendar system you use.
  3. What other types of tools or systems or resources do you rely on to stay on task?
  4. Describe the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of this year or last year.
  5. What do you feel are your biggest challenges as a Loan Officer?

Communication questions:

  1. How do you entice new referral partners to meet with you?
  2. When and how do you ask for referrals from your clients?
  3. Describe what you said to a borrower the last time you had to communicate, “bad news.”
  4. Have you ever had to confront a referral partner or discontinue a working relationship with a referral partner? What did you say?
  5. What do you say to a customer who tells you they are going with another Lender?

Creativity questions:

  1. What types of marketing efforts have you engaged in with potential referral partners?
  2. Where and how often do you show up to meet new potential referral partners?
  3. What are some of the ways you have attempted to market yourself?
  4. What groups, associations, charities or organizations do you belong to?
  5. Describe how you go above and beyond for your customers after the transaction is closed.